That warm, cheeky smile. Contagious laughter. Eyes that literally sparkled as he talked about music and life. These were the first things that came to my mind after learning about them Quincy Diet Jonesdeath on November 3. And how lucky I was to have had the opportunity to chat many times with someone who truly personified every sense of the word “legend”.
It just so happened that the day before Jones died, I was cleaning out some old files and came across the yellowed pages of the first interview I did with him when I was a trade editor. Radio & records. It was November 1984: two years after Michael Jackson's seismic success with Impressive work in 1982 and a year before he pulled off an epic all-nighter with Jackson, Lionel Richie and a collection of musical superstars to record 'We Are the World'. When I interviewed him for a special Radio & records feature, “Master of Music,” was co-produced by the ever-luxurious Jones, with the director Steven Spielbergthe film adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple.
“The main driving force behind pop music as we know it today has always been black music,” he told me then before pulling back the curtain on his creative strategy. “The only thing I struggle with is the choice of tunes,” he said. And he was well ahead of the globalization of the industry, calling out Africa as a musical “gold mine” and, in later talks, South Korea and Indonesia.
Rereading the interview all these years later, it also shows that Jones was more than a creative wunderkind. He was insatiably curious, always looking for the next one. Given the advent of computers at the time, he spoke of the “archaic disk distribution system,” while presciently envisioning that “it could be possible in five years to have no stock in your house. no discs, tapes, nothing. If you had access to a satellite, a codebook/directory and a TV, you could pick up whatever you wanted at any time.”
A few weeks after this interview was published, I learned what a thoughtful and humorous man Jones was, too. One of my treasured keepsakes is a signed personal thank you card (stamped with an embossed “Q” in the upper left corner): “With your wonderful editing, you made me look like I know what I'm talking about.” Such a simple but impressive gesture.
This was only one aspect of Quincy Jones. Born in Chicago and raised in Seattle, he began his remarkable legacy as a big band and jazz-loving trumpeter who, starting at age 14, played for Billie Holiday and Billy Eckstine. After a year on scholarship at Berklee College of Music, he toured with Lionel Hampton's band, adding “pianist” and “arranger” to his resume. Within a few years, he was working with Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey. In 1957, he joined Mercury Records as director of A&R and later vice president, becoming the first black senior executive at a major label.
Best friends with Ray Charles since their teenage years in Seattle (“He taught me my first braille music”), Q — a nickname given to him by Frank Sinatra — covered Brother Ray's classic albums The genius of Ray Charles and Genius + Soul = Jazz. He went on to discover and produce “It's My Party” and other hits for early 1960s pop darling Leslie Gore, while also earning the first of what would eventually be 28 Grammy Awards and 80 nominations for his Basie score. I Can't Stop Loving You”. And let's not forget Jones' seminal collaborations with Basie and Sinatra, which produced the timeless romantic romp 'Fly Me to the Moon'.
Thanks to the initial undivided support of the actor Sidney Poitier and director Sidney Lumet, Jones collected film score credits In the heat of the night, The Wiz, The Italian job and The Color Purpleas well as television series Roots and theme songs for Ironside and Sanford and Sean. Jones' musical output was prolific and showed a rare talent for evolving with contemporary music. Signing to A&M Records in 1969, he released the Grammy-winning set of instrumental jazz Walking in Space that year, which sparked further forays into jazz, funk, R&B, pop and dance until 1981, with albums such as Body heat, I heard that!, Sounds… and stuff like that!! and The Dudethe latter of which featured newcomer James Ingram (“Just Once”).
Jones' work with Jackson is well-known, but his innate ear also brought to the fore other hitmakers such as George Benson, Patti Austin, Tevin Campbell and Treasurer through his Warner joint venture, Qwest Records, the which he founded in 1980. .
In the latter part of his career, Jones entered media that explored and celebrated Black culture and music. He produced The Fresh Prince of Bel-Airthat made Will Smith a bankable star, and took off Vibe both as a magazine and a talk show.
After various meetings at industry events over the next few years, I had the opportunity to interview a still indefatigable Jones—who survived two brain aneurysms in 1974 and a diabetic coma in 2015—about Bulletin board during his 80th and 85th birthday celebrations in 2013 and 2018. His gait was more measured and later, he began making his rounds in a wheelchair. But his musical and business drive hadn't slowed: He founded an artist management consultancy, collaborated with Harman on a line of AKG headphones and squeezed in time to write his 2001 autobiography. Q.
On both occasions, we sat in the screening room of his home in Bel-Air, Los Angeles. It was decorated with vintage posters of the films he had worked on, and the hallway walls were lined with Jones-produced album covers and autographed sheet music for 'We Are the World'. The showcases held his 28 Grammys.
Having traded wine for protein-rich smoothies at this point, Jones discussed topics such as co-founding Qwest TV, the first subscription, the video-on-demand service for jazz and how music had replaced the absence of his mother, who he was hospitalized for mental illness when he was 7. It had served him well.
Never content to stay the course, Jones has continued to evolve from musician, arranger, composer and producer to record label owner, artist manager, mentor, entrepreneur and global ambassador. As he declared in 1984, “If I had another 200 years, I still wouldn't have enough time to do all the things I dream of.”
This story appears in the November 16, 2024 issue Bulletin board.
